Charlottesville, guns, Trump-phobia and 'Their ABC’s groupthink'

It may not accord with the ABC's "innovative storytelling" line but, whether or not Civil War monuments should be retained or removed from public display, or supplemented by on-site "interpretative" displays, is a matter of fiercely contested opinion. At a time when nobody could say with certainty what accounted for the lawlessness in Charlottesville, President Trump was repeatedly pressed by his antagonists in the US media for his reaction. He made more than one public comment about had happened including this passing observation - taken out of context by the ABC: "Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch . . . [there were] very fine people on both sides".

Instead of confining itself to reporting the easily ascertainable known context and then carefully supplementing its reporting as verifiable facts emerged about what had happened on 12 August 2017, (which, as indicated below, took many months of painstaking investigation), the ABC was carried away by its institutional animosity to President Trump. In its earliest explicit web site editorial piece on 23 August under the tendentious headline "Donald Trump's comments on Charlottesville legitimize violence by right-wing extremists". In mid-July 2019, another anti-Trump piece used the same misleading and deceptive, by omission, headline.

Among the facts which occurred prior to 12 August 2017 were the City of Charlottesville's public decision-making process and the associated public debate about the Civil War monuments, the legal challenge to the validity of the Council's decision (which succeeded in 2019 and will likely provoke an appeal to the Supreme Court of Virginia), the Council's revocation and discriminatory variation of the permit issued to Jason Kessler, and his successful First Amendment-based challenge to the legality of that decision in the US District Court in Charlottesville on 11 August 2017.

Among the facts which occurred between 12 August 2017 and 15 January 2018 were the release of the very detailed report of the independent official inquiry regarding the multiple causes of, and shared individual and official responsibility for, the violence on 12 August 2017, and the City of Charlottesville's application for an injunction to prevent armed Left-Wing militias (including "Redneck Revolt") and Right-Wing militias from returning to Charlottesville on 12 August 2018. The ABC's ostensible overall indifference to the facts, if tested by an online search of its web site, may well explain why it has missed or has chosen to ignore the pending civil case against Jason Kessler which is scheduled for trial later this year.

At the very least, it is open to infer that the ABC's assessment from the outset was (and remains) that the Charlottesville lawlessness was attributable solely to the violence of members of Far-Right armed militia groups, and that, by his quoted words, the President had sought to "legitimize"that violence. If the ABC's Charlottesville "story"-line had gone no further, the full gravity of the foregoing reckless libel becomes obvious when each omitted material fact about what actually occurred before, on and after 12 August 2017 is set out in full.

However, the ABC's willingness to disregard its unique obligations by disseminating a personal attack masquerading as news/current affairs reporting, was seriously aggravated by the episode of Correspondents Report entitled "Redneck Revolt", broadcast by ABC-TV on 15 January 2018.

That programme presented the "Redneck Revolt" armed militia group as proof of an actual, as distinct from an alleged, substantial and understandable contrast between that group's willingness to engage in armed violence to achieve its political objectives, and the violence of Far-Right armed militias.

Among many questions which Australians are entitled to ask are the following: What induced the ABC to make a programme in which it can be seen to be cosying-up to the odious "Redneck Revolt" armed militia group, and appearing to sympathise with its manifestly spurious support for armed/violent protest? Had the ABC bothered to acquaint itself with the official report on what had occurred in Charlottesville, and with the pending application for a court order preventing "Redneck Revolt" and other armed militia groups from returning to make trouble in Charlottesville again?

From the day the official inquiry was announced, it ought to have been obvious to our national broadcaster that it would be the height of folly to outlay a dollar of the nation's scarce public money to indulge Redneck Revolt's smug, rifle-toting leader by enabling him to make the contemptibly absurd claims that "when the Left uses violence in the rare cases that it happens, it's resistance"and that his armed troops were in Charlottesville to provide a "public service". This was made worse by the ABC's fatuous voiceover observation that "a year into Donald Trump's presidency resurgent white supremacists are preaching hate. Now left-wing activists are hitting back with their own shock tactics."

Furthermore, if the ABC had been adhering to its statutory obligations, it would have reported on the progress of the City of Charlottesville's injunction application. If it was doing that unaffected by opinionated "storytelling" narratives, it would have become aware of the nauseating mouthing-off by the "Redneck Revolt" crowd about the terrible injustice of their being hauled into court by the City.

If anyone in the ABC is inclined to engage in some elementary factual investigation, it will quickly reveal that, in the case of the violent "Redneck Revolt" militia members - the courageous "left-wing activists hitting back with their own shock tactics"as public protectors – it ignominiously consented to the Court's final decree keeping them and their no less odious violent comrades-in-arms (Far-Left and Far-Right) out of Charlottesville.